The Council of Europe: this is Britain’s human rights opportunity

Chairing the Council of Europe will provide an opportunity to push for more
national freedom, says Sadiq Khan.

Britain's chairmanship of the Council of Europe is an opportunity to reform the human rights courtPhoto: EPA

By Sadiq Khan

6:28AM GMT 07 Nov 2011

Today, the UK takes over chairmanship of the Council of Europe – an organisation of 47 nations and 800 million people stretching from the west coast of Ireland to Vladivostok. One of the inspirations for its creation was Winston Churchill’s 1946 speech at the University of Zurich, in which he advocated a body to foster truth and understanding that could prevent the continent being ravaged again by conflict.

Among the council’s earliest achievements was the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated court based in Strasbourg. As this is the first time in a generation that the United Kingdom has held the chairmanship of the council, the next six months will provide a golden opportunity for the Government to put its money where its mouth is and press for reform of the court. It is a small window of opportunity, so ministers will have to move quickly and decisively if they are to bring about the changes they claim to seek.

And there’s no doubt that the human rights court does need reforming if it is to maintain any legitimacy across Europe. In particular, it must not lose sight of something called the “margin of appreciation”. This is a principle that the court itself developed, under which uniform judgments are not imposed on states when there is no European-wide consensus as to the interpretation of specific rights.

Of course, it is essential that common standards are maintained in many areas of fundamental rights, such as freedom from torture or slavery – as we repeatedly demand of other nations. But where social policy is concerned, member states should be allowed to interpret rulings which suit their own circumstances and traditions.

One recent example where the court should have applied the margin of appreciation is the UK’s blanket ban on prisoner voting. In demanding that this be lifted, the human rights judges failed to give the UK the appropriate leeway it merited. Instead, the court should let this country decide who is allowed to vote and should also respect the response to its judgment from our elected legislature.

The court also faces a hefty backlog of cases – currently 150,000 and growing by 20,000 a year. This is partly a product of the court’s success: citizens of the new democracies in Eastern Europe are flocking to Strasbourg asking to be brought up to an acceptable level of rights – often basic liberties that the UK has long taken for granted. Unfortunately, they can wait years to obtain a decision, something the Government must try to speed up during its six months in charge.

Improving the quality of the judges is also important if the court is to retain a reputation as an international body of the highest calibre. The UK should insist on enhanced procedures for selecting qualified judges and we should use our standing as champions of human rights with some of the world’s best judges to raise the standard in Strasbourg to the level we expect at home.

We must also ensure the court focuses on worthy cases. This means insisting upon screening mechanisms that sift out irrelevant cases early on. Furthermore, the court is swamped with similar – often identical – cases, so judges need a system to consolidate them, reducing caseloads.

Similarly, improving awareness of the workings of the court, and what cases are in its scope, should reduce demand in Strasbourg. For this to be addressed involves an element of subsidiarity – the principle that member states should secure human rights themselves and that recourse to the court should be a last resort. The last Labour government recognised this by enshrining the convention into British law through the Human Rights Act. This reduced the need for UK citizens to take cases to Strasbourg and allowed our courts to develop their own interpretation of the European convention’s rights, while also providing a lead to other council members.

Whether the Government can point to any success over the next six months will depend in part on whether inroads have been made into the massive backlog of cases, and on reductions in the rate of new cases. It will also be measured by the extent to which the court accepts that countries should be given a wider margin of appreciation in social policy. In addition, the Government must exploit the opportunity our chairmanship provides to educate the nation about the workings of the ECHR – how membership benefits not just us but the whole continent. After all, the convention, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and drafted largely by a Conservative, David Maxwell Fyfe, is a blueprint for spreading traditional British values on human rights across Europe.

Since the UK will not chair the Council of Europe again until 2035, we will put party politics aside and work in the national interest to bring about a more efficient and effective human rights court. Labour will support the Government in its endeavours and measure its success against the tests I have set out here. But we will not sanction watering down the protection that the convention provides to the people of this country and beyond.